The second round of the singles action in the US Open concludes on Thursday when the bottom half of both draws are played out across the Flushing Meadows complex.
The shocks continued on Wednesday as Grigor Dimitrov was the latest in a long list of big names to make an early exit from the tournament and the likes of Andy Murray, Roger Federer, Simona Halep and Petra Kvitova are among those aiming to avoid a shock exit of their own on Thursday.
Matches take place throughout Thursday on all the main courts and there is a fair bit of betting opportunity over the course of the day and hopefully that can kick start my own tournament which has been a tale of woe so far.
In the men’s draw on Thursday there are a couple I like involving big servers. Nicolas Mahut is in action against the Spaniard Guillermo Garcia-Lopez out on five and the Frenchman will be looking to build on his 2-0 head to head lead over his opponent.
Facing Mahut’s bomb of a serve isn’t going to be easy for anyone in this tournament let alone a guy who hadn’t won a match since Queens before the first round of this event. Even in the first round here GGL needed five sets to come past Janko Tipsarevic. In the end the Spaniard was lucky Tipsarevic wilted in the heat.
Mahut came past Sam Querrey in the first round in straight sets which won’t have been easy on these courts in front of the American fans so credit should go to him for coming through that and I fancy him to build on that by dominating this one with his serve.
Another match I expect the serve to dominate in is the Ivo Karlovic vs Jiri Vesely match. Both men have a big serve and neither are particularly proficient in the ground stroke department so I’m seeing a couple of tie-breaks in this and a very lengthy tussle in terms of games.
You would think Karlovic’s extra pep on the serve would land him the win overall but with Vesely knowing he can beat the Croat having done it before in his career I fancy this one will have more than three sets. With that in mind I’m expecting to see more than 43.5 games.
In the women’s draw the seeds have been falling left right and centre and another one looks vulnerable on Thursday in the form of Garbine Muguruza. Muguruza takes on the British rising star Johanna Konta in a real banana skin for the Wimbledon finalist.
Konta is on an incredible winning run at the minute having won her last 11 matches due to winning a couple of minor titles on the way into this tournament and she’ll know she has the beating of the Spaniard as she beat her at Eastbourne just prior to Wimbledon.
Muguruza had that incredible run to the final at SW19 but she hadn’t won a match since until the first round here and with 31 unforced errors in 18 games she didn’t play fantastically in her first match. We saw at Wimbledon that she’s a big game player though so rather than take Konta to win I’ll play safer and take her with a 3.5 game start at odds against.
Finally there are a few favourites that I like in both draws which pay nicely when put together as a treble. Firstly the Brazilian seed Thomaz Bellucci plays Yoshihito Nishioka of Japan. The Japanese was another who went five sets in the first round while Bellucci was largely on easy street. The Brazilian has a big leftie serve and a good forehand and I expect him to come through there.
I’m going to treble him up with John Isner who should have too much strength for Mikhail Youzhny and then in the women’s draw I’m taking the conqueror of Lucie Safarova in the first round and that is Lesia Tsurenko. Tsurenko is making a name for herself with some big wins over big players recently and she looks good accumulator material to me. Those three in a treble pays slightly more than 6/4 which looks acceptable.
Back N.Mahut to beat G-Garcia Lopez for a 4/10 stake at 1.90 with Paddy Power
Back J.Vesely vs I.Karlovic – Over 43.5 games for a 4/10 stake at 1.91 with Stan James
Back J.Konta (+3.5 games) to beat G.Muguruza for a 3/10 stake at 2.10 with Betfred
Back T.Bellucci x J.Isner x L.Tsurenko treble for a 4/10 stake at 2.56 with Sportingbet
